CHAPTER XLV
LES TERNES
ARRONDISSEMENT XVII. (BATIGNOLLES-MONCEAU)
A NUMBER of small dwellings lying without the city bounds to the north, in the commune of Clichy, were known in the fifteenth century as “les Batignolles,” i.e. the little buildings. Separated from Clichy in the nineteenth century, the district of les Batignolles was joined to Monceau. New streets were built, old erections swept away: Avenue de Clichy, in part the Grande Rue of the district, was first planted with trees in 1705. At intervals along its course, and in the short streets connected with it, we find eighteenth-century houses, none of special interest. At No. 3, the Taverne de Paris is decorated with paintings by modern artists. A famous restaurant, dating from 1793, stood till 1906 at No. 7. At No. 52 of Rue Balagny, opening out of the Avenue, we see the sign “Aux travailleurs,” and on the façade, words to the effect that the house was built during the war years 1870-71. At No. 154 of the Avenue, we find the quiet leafy Cité des Fleurs. Rue des Dames was a road leading to the abbey “des dames de Montmartre” in the seventeenth century. Rue de Lévis was in long-gone ages a road leading to what was then the village of Monceaux, its name derived perhaps from the Latin Muxcellum, a mossy place, more probably from Monticellum, a mound, or from Mons calvas, the bald or bare mount. The Château de Monceaux was on the site of Place Lévis. The official palace of the Papal Nuncio was in Rue Legendre, No. 11 bis. The modern church St-Charles we see here, built in 1907, was previously a Barnabite chapel. Rue Léon-Cosnard dates from the seventeenth century, when it was Rue du Bac d’Asnières. In the old Rue des Moines we find one of the few French protestant churches of Paris.
Avenue de Villiers, leading of old to the village of Villiers, now incorporated with Levallois-Perret, was, from its formation in 1858 to the year 1873, Avenue de Neuilly. Puvis de Chavannes died at No. 89, in 1898. Avenue de Wagram in its course from the Arc de Triomphe to Place des Ternes dates from the Revolution year 1789, known then as Avenue de l’Étoile. Avenue MacMahon began as Avenue du Prince Jerôme. Avenue des Ternes is the ancient route de St-Germain, subsequently known as the old Reuilly Road—Reuilly is half-way to St-Germain—later as Rue de la Montagne du Bon-Air, to become on the eve of its début as an Avenue, route des Ternes, the chief road of the terra externa, the territory beyond the city bounds on that side. The village Les Ternes was taken within the Paris boundary line in 1860. The barrière du Roule was surrounded in the past by a circular road, now Place des Ternes. We find important vestiges of the fine Château des Ternes in the neighbourhood of Rue Bayen, Rue Guersant and Rue Demours. The church St-Ferdinand built in 1844-47 was named in memory of the duc d’Orléans, killed near the spot.
CHAPTER XLVI
ON THE BUTTE
ARRONDISSEMENT XVIII. (BUTTE MONTMARTRE)
WE are on supremely interesting ground here, ground at once sacred, historic and characteristic of the mundane life of the city above which it stands. At or near its summit, St-Denis and his two companions were put to death in the early days of Christianity. On the hill-side most memorable happenings have been lived through. In the old streets and houses up and down its slopes poets and artists have ever dwelt, worked and played, and in its theatres, its music-halls, cabarets, etc., Parisians of all classes have sought amusement—good and evil. In past days Paris depended on Montmartre for its daily bread, for the flour that made it was ground by the innumerable windmills of the Butte. The sails of many of those windmills worked far into the reign of Napoléon III, who did not admire their aspect and even had a scheme for levelling the Butte! So it is said. Reaching the arrondissement by the Rue des Martyrs, which begins, as we know, in arrondissement IX, we come upon two buildings side by side of very opposite uses: the Comédie Mondaine, formerly the famous Brasserie des Martyrs and Divan Japonais, and the Asile Nationale de la Providence, an institution founded in 1804 as a retreat for aged and fallen gentlepeople.
The hôtel at No. 79 is on the site of the Château d’hiver, where the Revolutionists of Montmartre had their club. No. 88 was the dancing-saloon known as the Bossu. No. 76 that of the Marronniers. Rue Antoinette shows us points of interest of another nature. At No. 9, in the couvent des Dames Auxiliatrices du Purgatoire, we see the very spot on which there is reason to believe St. Denis and his companions suffered martyrdom. An ancient crypt is there, unearthed in the year 1611, to which we are led down rough steps, beneath a chapel built on the site in 1887; we see a rude altar and above it words in Latin to the effect that St-Denis had invoked the name of the Holy Trinity on that spot. The crypt is no doubt a vestige of the chapel built on the site by Ste-Geneviève. It was in this chapel, not as is sometimes asserted higher up the Butte, that Ignatius Loyola and his six companions, on August 15, 1574, made the solemn vow which resulted in the institution of the Order of the Jesuits. The chapel was under the jurisdiction of the “Dames de Montmartre,” and after the great fire at the abbey the nuns sought refuge in the old chapel here, made it a priory. Several persons of note were buried there. At the Revolution it was knocked to pieces and remained a ruin until rebuilt by the abbé Rebours in 1887.
Leaving this interesting spot and passing through Rue Tardieu, we reach Place St-Pierre, formerly known as Place Piemontési, and go on through Rue Foyatier to the ancient Rue St-Eleuthère, once in part of its length Rue du Pressoire, a name recalling the abbey winepress on the site of the reservoir we see there now. Thus we come to Rue Mont-Cenis, the ancient Chaussée St-Denis, and in part of its course, Rue de la Procession, referring to the religious processions of those bygone days. And here we see before us the most ancient of Paris churches, St-Pierre de Montmartre. It dates from the first years of the ninth century, built on the site of an earlier chapel or several successive chapels, the first one erected over the ruins of a pagan temple. Four black marble pillars from the ruins of that temple were used for the Christian church: we see them there to-day, two at the west door, two in the chancel. We see there, too, ancient tombstones, one that of Adelaide de Savoie, foundress of the abbey, for the Choir des Dames was the abbey chapel, and there the abbesses were buried. The old church was threatened with destruction after the desecration of 1871, when it was used as a munition dépôt. Happily it has been saved and in recent years restored. The façade is eighteenth-century work, quite uninteresting as we see, but the view of the east end from without, the apse, the old tower and the simply severe Gothic interior, are strikingly characteristic. The cross we see in front of the church was brought here from an old cemetery near. The garden adjoining, with the Calvaire set up there in 1833, was in ancient days the nun’s graveyard. The cemetery on the northern side dates from the time of the Merovingian kings.
